• Home
  • Memo
    • Past Memo Archives
    • Podcast (iTunes)
    • RSS Feed
  • Roy H. Williams
    • Private Consulting
    • Public Speaking
    • Pendulum_Free_PDF
    • Sundown in Muskogee
    • Destinae, the Free the Beagle trilogy
    • People Stories
    • Stuff Roy Said
      • The Other Kind of Advertising
        • Business Personality Disorder PDF Download
        • The 10 Most Common Mistakes in Marketing
          • How to Build a Bridge to Millennials_PDF
          • The Secret of Customer Loyalty and Not Having to Discount
          • Roy’s Politics
    • Steinbeck’s Unfinished Quixote
  • Wizard of Ads Partners
  • Archives
  • More…
    • Steinbeck, Quixote and Me_Cervantes Society
    • Rabbit Hole
    • American Small Business Institute
    • How to Get and Hold Attention downloadable PDF
    • Wizard Academy
    • What’s the deal with
      Don Quixote?
    • Quixote Wasn’t Crazy
      • Privacy Policy
      • Will You Donate A Penny A Wedding to Bring Joy to People in Love?

The Monday Morning Memo

The door to immediate action is easily kicked open by the steel-toed boot of urgency.

If you want people to take immediate action, you’re going to need a credible shortage.
A shortage of product. “Only 11 remain!”
A shortage of time. “Sale ends Saturday at 6PM!”
A shortage of capacity. “Only 128 seats are available!”
Some kind of shortage.

But smart marketers don’t create a series of non-stop urgencies.
Smart marketers create a bond with future customers.
And you don’t create a bond by crying wolf.
You create a bond by telling a story.

Do you want to inspire your customer?

Inspirational stories are never about accumulation.
They’re about sacrifice.

What have you sacrificed and why? Are you willing to tell that story?

Story = character + predicament + attempted extrication.

Scientific American published an essay on May 8, 2013, in which Jag Bhalla quotes Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind, “The human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor. Everyone loves a good story; every culture bathes its children in stories.” The purpose of these stories is to engage and educate the emotions. Stories teach us character types, plots, and the social-rule dilemmas prevalent in our culture.

Stories explain how the world works and help us understand who we are.

“Research consistently shows that fiction does mold us. The more deeply we are cast under a story’s spell, the more potent its influence. In fact, fiction seems to be more effective at changing beliefs than nonfiction, which is designed to persuade through argument and evidence. Studies show that when we read nonfiction, we read with our shields up. We are critical and skeptical. But when we are absorbed in a story, we drop our intellectual guard…”

“We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories. But why are humans storytelling animals at all? Why are we, as a species, so hopelessly addicted to narratives about the fake struggles of pretend people? Anthropologists have long argued that stories have group-level benefits. Traditional tales, from hero epics to sacred myths, perform the essential work of defining group identity and reinforcing cultural values.”
– Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human

Stories are what shape and define a tribe.

Make no mistake, people who bond with a brand are people who have joined a tribe. And that’s a healthy thing. According to Professor Alison Gopnik, “other people are the most important part of our environment. In our ultra-social species, social acceptance matters as much as food.” *

We include ourselves in dozens of tribes. Tribes of geography, school attendance, sports, faith, music, nationality, art, hobbies, history, family affiliation, hair color, age, gender, automobiles, lifestyle, recreation, food, fashion, tattoos, facial hair and footwear. We buy what we buy to remind ourselves – and tell the world around us – who we are.

Our purchases help us tell our story.

Most ads are full of information. They don’t really tell a story.

“Stories the world over are almost always about people with problems,” writes Jonathan Gottschall. They display “a deep pattern of heroes confronting trouble and struggling to overcome. Stories give us feelings we don’t have to pay full cost for.” Stories free us from the limits of our own direct experience and allow us to learn from the experiences of others.

Online reviews are stories told by customers about their experiences.
Testimonial ads are another type of story told by customers about their experiences. But we listen to these stories with a grain of suspicion as we seek to pierce the veiled motives of the storytellers.

Propaganda is a story that represents itself to be the truth.

We believe it only to the degree that we trust the storyteller.

Entertainment is a story that doesn’t represent itself to be the truth.

If a story doesn’t claim to be the truth, there is no reason to doubt it.

Entertainment is the currency that will purchase the time and attention of a too-busy public.

Have you found your story?
Are you telling it well?
Are people entertained?

How’s business?

Roy H. Williams

* Alison Gopnik is an American professor of psychology and affiliate professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley

Email Newsletter

Sign up to receive the Monday Morning Memo in your inbox!

Download the PDF "Dictionary of the Cognoscenti of Wizard Academy"

Random Quote:

“I feel almost a blood relationship with all the artists in all the mediums, for I find that we face the same problems but solve them in our own ways. When young people in my writing classes, for example, ask what subjects they should study to become writers, I surprise them by replying: ‘Ceramics and eurhythmic dancing.’ When they look surprised I explain: ‘Ceramics so you can feel form evolving through your fingertips molding the moist clay, and eurhythmic dancing so you can experience the flow of motion through your body. You might develop a sense of freedom that way.’”

- James Michener, This Noble Land, ch. 10

The Wizard Trilogy

The Wizard Trilogy

More Information

  • Privacy Policy
  • Wizard Academy
  • Wizard Academy Press

Contact Us

512.295.5700
corrine@wizardofads.com

Address

16221 Crystal Hills Drive
Austin, TX 78737
512.295.5700

The MondayMorningMemo© of Roy H. Williams, The Wizard of Ads®